The printed page is also the door by which the individual, in our own time, enters the larger rooms of life. A good book, “the precious life blood of a master spirit stored upon purpose to a life beyond life,”[26] is almost always the channel through which uncommon minds get incitement and aid to lift themselves into the higher thought that other uncommon minds have created. “In study we hold converse with the wise, in action usually with the foolish.”[27] While the mass of mankind about us is ever commonplace, there is always, in our day, a more select society not far away for one who craves it, and a man like Abraham Lincoln, whose birth would have meant hopeless serfdom a few centuries ago, may get from half a dozen books aspirations which lead him out to authority and beneficence. While spoken language, along with the writing and printing by which it is preserved and disseminated, is the main current of communication, there are from the start many side channels. Thus among savage or barbarous peoples we everywhere find, beside gesture language, the use of a multitude of other symbols, such as the red arrow for war, the pipe of peace, signal fires, notched sticks, knotted cords, totems, and, among nations more advanced in culture, coats-of-arms, flags and an infinite diversity of symbolic ritual. There is, indeed, a world of signs outside of language, most of which, however, we may pass by, since its general nature is obvious enough. The arts of painting, sculpture, music, and architecture, considered as communication, have two somewhat different functions: First, as mere picture or image writing, conveying ideas that could also be conveyed (though with a difference) in words; and, second, as the vehicle of peculiar phases of sentiment incommunicable in any other way. These two were often, indeed usually, combined in the art of the past. In modern times the former, because of the diffusion of literacy, has become of secondary importance. Of the picture-writing function the mosaics, in colors on a gold ground, that cover the inner walls of St. Mark’s at Venice are a familiar instance. They set forth in somewhat rude figures, helped out by symbols, the whole system of Christian theology as it was then understood. They were thus an illuminated book of sacred learning through which the people entered into the religious tradition. The same tradition is illustrated in the sculpture of the cathedrals of Chartres and Rheims, together with much other matter—secular history, typified by figures of the kings of France; moral philosophy, with virtues and vices, rewards and punishments; and emblems of husbandry and handicraft. Along with these sculptures went the pictured windows, the sacred relics—which, as Gibbon says, “fixed and inflamed the devotion of the faithful”[28]—the music, and the elaborate pageants and ritual; all working together as one rich sign, in which was incarnated the ideal life of the times.